The recent outbreak of coronavirus and the declaration of it being a pandemic has the stock markets crashing the world over. The Dow has fallen more than 1,000 points daily, in one the biggest falls since the 2008 financial crisis, causing much fear of another crash of the same scale the world over in the coming days.

The stock markets have crashed and recovered fairly regularly throughout history.  This means exactly the pictures it draws of significant and drastic drops in market values that may last from as short as mere hours to spread of months or even years, bankrupting paper millionaires to nothing, becoming a story of riches to rags.